Easy to Start A Podcast: Text To Speech Blog Posts With Odiogo

Lynn Terry sent out an email this afternoon alerting her readers to a new utility that can make your blog posts more accessible to more people. In her post “New: The ClickNews Podcast“, she shared a new free service that changes your blog post text to speech.

If you look at the top of this post, you will see a little button that says, Listen Now. The service called Odiogo and it uses text to speech technology to make a blog post into a podcast. Once installed the post is changed to audio and a feed that can be followed through ITunes is made available by clicking on the Odiogo logo in the right hand column of my site. If you wish to subscribe, just click and you’ll be taken to a page where you can subscribe. The podcast can be downloaded to an MP3 player, IPod or IPhone.

The voice sounds very robotic but the owners of the site are working to make it sound more natural.

The main reason I decided to add the service was to allow those who print disabilities, e.g. poor vision, to have better access to the information I provide. As baby boomers we all know we’re starting to age and our eyesight is starting to change. I for one have noticed that my eyes aren’t what they used to be. Making my site more accessible to my readers is an important part of my marketing plan.

The other reason I added the Listen Now button is that now my blog is a podcast on ITunes and it didn’t cost me a thing, only about five minutes to set it up. Set-up is as easy as installing a plug-in to your blog.

If you’re interested in adding Odiogo to your blog, this article at Mashable will help you get set-up.

Ciao!

Reba

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